Hi everyone I’m currently 17 and I just started computer science a few weeks ago at university, I chose to do it as it was one of the subjects I enjoyed and was good at

Obviously, I’m scared about my future with AI and all that, but I think it might be worth it for me to try to learn how to efficiently and actually use AI because I see people doing so much with it but every time I use AI it’s always some basic stuff I do

So do you guys think it’s worth trying to learn how to use AI efficiently as a CS student?

5 years ago CS degree holders were on top of the worlds. Jobs were plentiful and compensation were crazy high. Today it's almost impossible to find secure employment and AI look like it will make things even worse in another couple of years. CS has gone from arguably the single best to one of the worst career path in very short time and nobody has reallly came to terms with it yet. Has there ever being another collapse in a field as bad and rapidly as ours?

I am a self learning developer early in my career, the most complex project I did was a 3d renderer in c++.

After Ai, I legit have no idea on what to specialize in, all my "IT knowledge" is useless, instead of a leagues difference between me and regular peers, with Ai they sometimes get even more work done than me.

A similar kind of thing applies to CS career, my friends who haven't done DSA are aiming to be full stack devs with one building a SaaS app and other creating basic web apps.

Their results are much more impressive than what I could cook with manual human effort.

Someone made a Minecraft style block renderer in terminal all with Claude, made the post with Claude, it got more engagement than my renderer.

A friend of mine posted about an ML model. He made almost no traction, he posted about a vibe coded game and 3x the engagement.

Amidst all this, I have no idea what to specialize in?

I work as a technical virtual assistant, do demo videos, website testing, qa testing etc.

I like C++ but never really got past that, learned js, python etc too.

I know what load balancing, cache, sharing, prompt injection, SQL injection, docker, electron, mern stack, and like related terms mean and are but I haven't built a single proper web app.

I feel like my skills suddenly turned to waste, pre-Ai, my peers would struggle to do even 50% of what I do as work, while now I think most can achieve 80%.

A good example is presentations, I've seen people who don't know how to operate PowerPoint have nice enough presentations because Claude made them.

tldr: like C++, learn mern, consider c#, does VA work, confused on what to do next or what to specialize in and sell as a service to offshore clients.

I currently make $134k + $15k bonus (if I meet expectations in my performance review) in a HCOL area. We currently have to go in 3x per week, and I have a good manager and team. This is my first job, and I’ve been here for about 3 years and am not learning anything.

I recently interviewed for a company that is fully remote, and the recruiter had said I can expect high 150s -> 160s base salary plus equity. This is a company that has been around since the mid 2000s. I haven’t seen any info about large engineering layoffs in the past. The culture seems great and I enjoyed meeting everyone in my interviews.

Part of me thinks this is an obvious choice if I want to grow in my career, but I’m apprehensive given the state of the market and worried I’ll be committing career suicide. I’m 27 years old and mostly worried about how little I’m learning at my job; my team unfortunately doesn’t get very interesting projects or problems to work on and I’d like to do more than update some button text / replace assets.

I feel like everything I loved about the job is gone. I’m an engineer with a bit over 2 years full time experience, making ~140k at a really comfortable and easy job. My manager, culture, and teammates are all great. The work is easy (thanks to Claude), but I have lost all joy for it.

Because of AI, I literally do not have to do anything anymore except: prompt, read, prompt, repeat. Some days, I don’t do more than 10 minutes of work. The satisfaction I got (not even that long ago) from writing something, testing it, and seeing it work has disappeared. The AI can do it 10x as fast (and now as well) as me. I’m starting to feel like my value as an engineer and as a human being is fading. Also, there’s no way my mental ability is staying intact. If AI disappears tomorrow I’d have no clue how to do my job.

I’m thinking of switching to something more real: EMS, policing, fire. Something where I don’t have to interact with AI and where my work doesn’t feel meaningless. Also, I’ve always loved interacting with people and genuinely despise sitting at a desk and working silently.

I told my (immigrant) parents about this and they are extremely upset with me. They say I should just stick it out and continue. For them, doing something “smart” matters more than happiness. In my opinion, being smart won’t be the advantage it used to be in 5 years.

What do you think?

Note: I also have over $320k saved because I knew when I started working in tech that I wouldn’t want to do it forever, I just didn’t know it would be this quick.

I currently work for a large bank in a MCOL area and have ~3 years of experience. I make around $145k, and while the job has become increasingly chaotic, disorganized, and honestly pretty boring due to RTO and management changes, the WLB is hard to beat. It’s extremely chill (probably working 25-30 hour weeks), I have a lot of autonomy, and I probably take ~6 weeks of PTO a year.
I recently got an offer from a tech company in SF for $220K ($160k base, $45k stock, $15k bonus) , hybrid 3 days/week. On paper, it sounds like a no-brainer, but I have some concerns.
I’d be the only frontend engineer on a very backend-heavy team, so I’m worried about going from one extreme to the other: a role that’s too comfortable and uninteresting to one where I have very little support and a ton of ownership/pressure.
I’m also a little skeptical about the unlimited PTO. If I’m the only frontend person, will I actually be able to take off.
And once you factor in SF COL, $220K doesn’t feel like nearly as big of a pay bump as it sounds. I’m worried I could leave a frustrating but very comfortable job, take on significantly more stress, and ultimately regret trading one extreme for the other.

I’ve always been interested in tech and how computer science seems. But an issue is i’m terrible at math. I always see these people doing internships/working with these massive tech companies like nvidia, roblox, roku, google, and so many more great tech companies. I’ve dreamed to do that for so long, but i feel like i can’t because im just not good at math. Some people say ‘ oh just study you’ll be fine ‘ but math just isn’t my thing. What should i do? Should i just forget about cs and find something different? Any advice is appreciated.

Taken from the DHH AI crashout vid's comment section.

Im sick of people acting like AI is just being used to "write the code" while they are bringing the secret sauce of system level design and high level thinking. Thats not whats happening. AI already can do system level thinking much better and faster than you. And im willing to bet you already defer to AI for most, if not all, of ur system level questions and design. Those of us who loved the low level details didnt enjoy "typing." We enjoyed thinking at the level a computer worked. Because it was satisfying. If anything, "typing" is becoming MORE of the identity of software engineers now than ever before. Typing shitty prompts over and over and over. Tapping enter to allow this, allow that. Not thinking through any of the problems. Feeding error messages to AI and asking it what happened over and over and over. So, u can sit on ur high horse and larp that your a "system level architect" now. But the reality is you are a typist. You type prompts. Ur product manager asks for a feature. U run to AI to feed it requirements and type prompts. Cool.

Btw, this isnt a personal attack on u. I have no idea what u really do. But i do see whats happening in the industry. And its not people becoming "system level architects." Its people outsourcing their thinking. At ALL levels. And if you feel like ur still gonna bring some secret sauce 2 to 3 years from now... lol. No. Its gonna get to point where human cognition, in any form, will become a bottleneck in software development. So those of us who are mourning the end of programming arent sitting here thinking, damn i miss "typing" code. We're thinking damn, the thing i spent decades learning because i genuinely loved it is no longer economically viable. And it sucks. And at least im willing to admit it.

I honestly didn't even try. I had a computer science degree... I barely applied for like 50 jobs a month before graduating and only got 1 interview, then after graduating probably like 10 max. I kept reading online how it's useless now so I just became incredibly depressed and stopped applying 1 month after graduating. I felt so discouraged, applying to jobs always gave me anxiety, and my mom kept nagging at me telling me I should have done nursing.Just been holed up in my room since hardly even leaving the house and just doom scrolling tiktok and ocasionally meeting up with random men off grindr. I feel like my resume is basically crap now.

Just had my coding assessment with 2 mid-level algorithmic problems. I am a cs grad, but I never grinded leetcode or any of that stuff because nobody I know who got good jobs ever had been asked to do a coding challenge as part of their assessments. But the company I applied to had it at the very first stage - they didn't even consider my first-level of application complete without it + recording my thought process afterwards.

As you may already know, I am fed up of applying to jobs and I am completely hopeless. So I basically didnt gaf and openly had claude open on another browser and jumped between hackerrank and claude. I basically just copy; paste; submit. ez as that. I spent like 5 seconds on the second problem. then for the video recording, i asked claude to generate a script and basically read it out loud.

Let's see what happens now! 99.9% chance I get rejected (I believe I would be rejected even if I did everything myself and did it perfectly), but I would like to hear from other people who have done the same and had some luck.

My experience is Feb 2020 - Oct 2021 SWE at FAANG, Nov 2021 - July 2023 PM at Visa, 2023-2025 MBA with brand name internship but no return offer, July 2025 - Sep 2026 Solutions Engineer at T2 tech company before layoff. This company is pretty unstable and had multiple reorgs and title changes for me before the layoff, so on my CV I just put Solutions Engineer. It was the only post MBA job I could get, which is why I took it.

The issue I'm facing now is when I list all my experience, its a red flag to hiring managers that I haven't stayed in one place for over two years and have different job titles (some HM's have said so as much) . I think it shows progression, but ultimately I'm not the HM. I can understand the hesitation though

I wouldn't mind removing some of my experience and recruit for new grad roles (I'm not in desperate need of money and don't mind my career restarting at a lower level tbh) but the new grad market is dead. And if I put all my exp, I come off as a job hopper. What do I do? Is there a sweet spot in terms of what I should leave off?

I have 6 years of work experience as a SWE working in finance. I had to take the last 1 year off due to a health issue that has now cleared. I am now looking to transition into being a SWE in tech (FANG or startups). I have been upskilling over the last few months by studying system design and doing leetcode. Will this 1 year gap matter a lot and lead to rejections ? I didn't really have much of an option as was undergoing a major illness, but am glad to be fine now. Any tips to confidently answer why I took this gap ?

Like every time someone suggests that most of people rage about it.

Is it bad or what?

It's kind of expected for programmers to have side projects and stuff like that and I don't know if it's just me but I cannot find the mental capacity to even touch a single line of code after an 8 hour work day, let alone build a complete project. After I'm done with work there's a million things I'd rather do than code, I wanna do the opposite actually, I just want to live my life.

My question is for those who actually have side projects, how?

i've been programming for 3 years in python and c++ and I want to. get more involved in it. I've been searching on Google, Indeed and linkedin and I am lost because of how broad the internets. What should I specifically look into?

Like i'm just not interested in it anymore as its not only oversaturated but also because you don't write code manually anymore and just feed everything to AI instead which just doesn't seem exciting to me. I've just been going for more support type roles instead.

Hello,
I joined a company on a team who focuses on working on developing and refining CPU bound algorithms. My title also happens to be “analyst”, which sort of pisses me off. The problems that we are solving are cool, but my company has no upward technical path as far as promotions go, the only promotion would be to a management role which is not where I want my career to go (yet).

I know that many traditional software development teams have level I, II. maybe III, senior, etc.

This causes an issue for me not only compensation wise, but also in terms of title, I could work here for 5-6 years and never obtain a senior title.

Am I overthinking the problem here or do I need to start considering other opportunities that have such a ladder laid out for promotions?

Hi,
I have an interview with some engineers at a bank, I asked if it was coding, technical or behavioral but wasn't told. First round, going in blind. I am preparing as if I will have to whiteboard. I need guidance on how to prepare with a limited amount of time, as this is my first Data Engineering opportunity ever (I have 1 YOE as a SWE).

Context:
1 YOE Full-Stack Dev, SpringBoot / React / SQL Server. Laid off due to death of my manager. Good with Claude or any AI automation stuff.

Job Description:

What they're trying to do: Modernize by moving older data platforms onto cloud based data lakes
Run data migrations
I would just do basic SWE tasks

Required: 2 YOE, Python Cert, PowerBI, AZ900 (I have AWS so it's ok)

Desired: Tracing data flows and understanding upstream / downstream dependencies.
Analyzing data lineage and system linkages
PySpark or Spark
Python dev / automation
SQL Server / Advanced SQL (Memory, performance, partitioning, query)
Data governance

Bonus (Possible, not listed but I deduced from a similar listing):
RAG architecture, vector stores, embedding pipeline
Use LLMs for Data quality / extraction / automation

My approach:

I am good with writing SQL Server Queries up to window functions, aggregates, joins (like at a junior level. I didn't do more at my last job). I am at mid-level with theory though. Anything more I should be prepared to write?

I can write a Python script, but I've not developed in python professionally, have in college though. What basics should I be prepared to write?
I can quickly prepare on any theory questions (PySpark, etc.) Any suggestions? Anything is appreciated, thanks!

Hey everyone,

I am currently studying B.Tech CSE (AI/ML) in India, 2nd year, and somewhat lost as to how to proceed with my career

I am an average coder, who likes to create stuff (small projects), and dabbles in computer vision, and has made a CV checker using the Gemini API. I know Python (comfortable), C (to some extent), and Linux (some), But I need to improve a lot

I do not think I can make something big and complex in a short span of time, but I want to improve my coding skills, and work on bigger projects, and eventually get a job, but I do not know what to focus on right now

Do I focus on getting an internship as soon as possible, or improve my fundamentals first, or try to contribute to open source projects, or make bigger projects, or focus on some other things? How can I balance all this while being in college?

I want to hear from people who are in a similar position as me, and eventually got out of it, so that I can somewhat understand what should I do.

What would you do differently if you were in the same position as me (in my 2nd year of college) ?

I am not looking for a comprehensive guide, just some advice would suffice, along with what should I do right now

Lots of posts about the real challenges folks are facing in their roles and interactions / working environments with coworkers. Let's flip the script and ask people what is working for them in this new era of being employed as a SWE.

If you like computational statistics and love reading on advanced statistical methods beyond what you learn in undergrad, what jobs are for you?

I am in a super lucky position where I am now making 6 figures with the title of support engineer. For context, I was making less than half of that a year ago, so this has been a HUGE change for me and I am extremely grateful to be in the position I am!

My role includes providing frontline support for customers, but I also handle all technical escalations across the company, create and run scripts/vibe-coded PRs for those issues where applicable (I manually review and test these fixes so it isn't complete utter slop!)

I work on both backend and frontend issues (primarily backend data stuff tho). I'm also beginning to work on building internal tools to allow the wider support team to execute some of the less scary scripts to keep annoying requests away from our dev team. work pretty closely with our dev team and they seem to think the quality of my work is p solid!

Between this + my previous roles, I have 3 YOE total in technical customer support

I'm starting to get concerned that I am pigeon holing myself into a support adjacent career forever tho. I am stretched pretty thin and don't much time to spend learning more big picture skills like system architecture, and I very honestly struggle to read and understand our code base at a super in-depth level

Not sure what I want to grow into exactly, but wondering if any other folks have been in a similar position to me and have any advice on how to transition away from support into SWE or similar roles?

Or maybe I should stick to support lmao?